Re: ld.so (fwd)

[Raul Miller <moth@magenta.com>]

Ian Jackson:
: Changing package names is usually a bad idea unless there's a good
: reason.

Or, more generally, inventing new interfaces where existing interfaces
will suffice is usually a bad idea unless there's a good reason.

: IMO the real solution is to have a real FTP method for dselect that
: only gets the first few bytes of each package to check what it is.
: This is doable, but someone has to go and write it.

Sure, but this doesn't exist yet.  Is it likely to soon?  [I sure
don't have the time -- I practically burned myself out last week.]

: If people want to keep a mirror of our FTP archive then they don't
: need a program like dftp.

dftp is analogous to a mirror -- but takes less storage.

: So, in summary, I think dftp is a mistake.

Bringing down only part of each package followed by all of most
packages isn't necessarily going to be more efficient.  Having two
distinct package names spaces where one will do isn't necessarily very
elegant.

It's true that dselect has more feature than dftp, but other than that
why would you classify dftp as a mistake?

-- 
Raul